Hollywood has been trying to properly portray Superman on-screen since the early 1950s. From The Adventures of Superman to Richard Donner’s big-screen version to The Adventures of Lois and Clark, each attempt has had varying degrees of success. The latest effort, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, is easily the best of the bunch, but falls short of being the near-perfect film every one else is telling you it is.

While my list of problems with the flick is substantial, I don’t want to start with the impression that this isn’t a great flick. Henry Cavill is great in the duel roles of Clark Kent and Superman. Some actors have really hit all of the notes of one side of the last son of Krypton, but Cavill does a great job differentiating one from the other without sacrificing either. Before walking into the theatre, I never quite got the casting of Amy Adams as Lois Lane, but she made me a believer (naturally). I’m not sure why I had any doubts, as the actress has proven time and time again she’s got the chops to pull off just about anything. Even Michael Shannon excels as General Zod.

Man of Steel also excels in one area, besting my still-favorite superhero flick The Avengers. For years, as special effects technology has grown by leaps and bounds, comic book fans have been waiting to see a superhero and villain to rival what we read in the comic books. While not every scene delivers – I was particularly bored by a fight on Krypton early on – there was one in particular that is everything geeks across the world have been waiting for for years. Superman fights several other Kyptonians in a battle that destroys everything in their way, fulfilling a promise made the first time special effect artists found a way to make George Reeves leap tall buildings in a single bound.

But I did have problems with the film, large and small. Everything from a series of unnecessarily confusing flashbacks that peppered the first half of the film to the Superman as Jesus analogies that found a way to be both subtle and over-the-top simultaneously. I also found the sequence on Krypton off-putting; it was a bit weird, rooting the story in space opera roots nearly as much as a superhero story (I didn’t particularly like the sequence on Krypton in Donner’s version either).

Most of all though, I was not a fan of what happened in the final moments of Man of Steel. The climax of the film clearly reflected the more emotionally mature feeling that producer Christopher Nolan brought from The Dark Knight trilogy. The story has a “Really Big Moment™” – one I think you could make an argument it only barely earned – but then completely ignores its magnitude as the story comes to a close. For the story to include that moment – earned or not – and then not deal with the aftermath was almost unforgivable.

At the end of the day however, it is just one moment in a sea of mostly-awesome. Man of Steel is going to make a metric-crap-ton of money at the box office, and will be lauded as one of the best movies of the year. Despite my reservations, the superhero film market needs stories like this. As much as I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe – and as long as Joss Whedon is in charge it will likely be my first love – we are lucky to have superhero stories with the emotional maturity of Man of Steel and The Dark Knight Returns.

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